


The Wolf You Feed

by RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Cuddling, Divided Loyalties, Kidnapping, M/M, Mistaken Identity, POV Draco, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2019-10-15 17:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17533280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Draco has a year to carry out the Dark Lord’s assignment. But sometimes when he visits the Room of Requirement, instead of hills of hidden objects and the Vanishing Cabinet, he finds a mirror wherein another boy speaks to him through his own reflection. As they grow closer, Draco’s repeated failures make him desperate to find a way to appease Voldemort. So desperate that when the boy he’s grown to love turns out to be Harry Potter, Draco kidnaps him on the spot.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my darling Miraculous for helping me with the premise and then beta reading this chapter! <3
> 
> Oh, and the title! XD

* * *

_1996, December_

Kidnapping, even with the use of magic, was a difficult business. Even after you had your victim neatly captured by _Incarcerous_ , there was also the matter of transporting a physically restrained body through public passageways without detection.

Draco hadn’t ever used _Incarcerous_ in a sustained way before, either, and he found that he was nervously watching the softly glowing bindings as though they’d disappear any moment. To soothe his anxiety, he Transfigured a shoelace into an unnecessary amount of rope and wound it tightly around Potter the old-fashioned way. At the same time, he had to ignore Potter’s moans, interspersed with terse threats, and his own wrenching gut.

His father had always said he had his mother’s soft-heartedness, and Draco was ashamed to know it was true. Like Narcissa, he was quick to form bonds and long to mourn betrayal. And look at the mess all that clap had gotten him into.

Now, he had to focus on the task at hand or he would curl up in a corner and cry. He just wanted to go back into the darkness and hear Jay’s voice. Not stupid Potter’s voice saying things like, “You said you _loved_ me.”

That one drew Draco up short. He was crouched close to Potter, cinching the rope tighter around his calves. Potter now looked like a creature emerging headfirst from a cocoon. Draco thought, distantly, that he could probably stop adding rope.

“I did,” Draco sniffed, standing back up, and kicked Potter’s bound legs halfheartedly. Potter winced, the big baby.

“Then how can you do this?” Potter demanded.

Draco sniffed. “First of all, I didn’t know who I was talking to.” That train of thought was dangerously emotional, so, blinking rapidly, Draco changed tactics. “It’s your fault, now that I think about it,” he amended in a steadier voice, “If I’d spent all that time fixing the Vanishing Cabinet, instead of talking to _you_ , I wouldn’t be this desperate.”

Potter gaped. Clearly he had no idea what Draco was talking about, but even his understandable ignorance chafed. Draco had thought he was on the cusp of having someone who was _his_ , who truly understood him...and it was _Potter_ all along.

Draco kicked him again, and harder this time. Potter didn’t flinch. He turned his head away listlessly, and neither of them said anything else. Draco levitated him a short distance to where he’d left the Invisibility Cloak, which Draco then arranged over Potter. It was easier to bear the situation when he couldn’t see Potter’s dejected face staring into the middle distance.

He hoped the Dark Lord was eager for his prize, and it would be a quick hand-off. Steeling himself to face his father—thinking, at least, Lucius would be _freed_ , and his mother would be safe—Draco set out into the corridors with his strongest Silencing Charm in place and prayed for safe passage to Professor Snape’s office and the open Floo.

* * *

_1996, July_

Draco had always loved the summers. While Slytherin was a home away from home, and he enjoyed constant power struggles as much as any member of his House, he loved being at the Manor best of all.

It wasn’t the general opulence, and all the comforts, though they didn’t hurt. The Slytherin dormitories had probably seemed luxurious a thousand years earlier—or whenever the school was founded, precisely—but by modern standards they were quite primitive. Still, they had been a second home so long, Draco rarely turned his nose up at anything anymore. And he was a Malfoy: being in the dungeons made him feel close to all the past generations of Malfoys to have slept and dreamed and laughed and suffered anxiety attacks from exams within those walls.

It was walking the gardens in mid-morning and watching the crups scatter the gnomes. It was going room to room past portraits with whom he had inside jokes dating back to when he was five years old. It was sitting by the fire in his father’s study reading a book while his father returned letters, and recalling falling asleep in his lap on those same sorts of evenings as a toddler, drugged by the scent of ink.

It was his mother, undoubtedly. Draco wouldn’t apologize for enjoying being spoiled.

But this summer was different, of course, in Lucius’ absence. Narcissa had begun all their traditions with a determined cheeriness that Draco found deeply suspect. He was bewildered by the reality that it was up to him to support her, and not the other way around. It wasn’t that he was unwilling, only that he was perfectly ill-equipped. When she affectionately batted aside his efforts to talk to her about his father or the brewing war, he let her do it.

Of course, whether they talked about it or not, events were in motion. Lucius had stood for the family before, but just because he was no longer available, didn’t mean the Dark Lord would forget the Malfoys. Draco knew it was cowardice, but he almost hoped the Dark Lord _would_ forget them; after all, if Lucius hadn’t been able to elevate the family in the Dark Lord’s eyes, Draco certainly couldn’t be expected to do so in his place.

But in the end, it wasn’t up to Draco. The Dark Lord called on Malfoy Manor in the early summer, on a hot, starry evening. He was heralded by Draco’s Aunt Bella.

A few minutes before all the fog was cast from Draco’s life, revealing his destiny in all its terrible clarity, he was lying on a chaise lounge on the third-story veranda with his mother, stargazing.

“There’s Arcturus,” Draco said, pointing toward the reddish star which was still bright, though not as shocking so as it had been in June.

“Do you remember how to find Spica?” Narcissa murmured. Their chaises were drawn close together, and she reached out easily to touch Draco’s hair, stroking it back from his forehead with cool fingertips.

“Yes,” Draco said, turning his face slightly toward her touch, then pointed again, though from her vantage point the sweep of his hand meant nothing. “Along the Plough,” he said quietly, narrowing his eyes on the row of stars above his fingertip. “‘Arc to Arcturus, then speed on to Spica.’”

They always did this when the moon was at its weakest; pajama-clad and absently passing back and forth a silver tray of snacks which the elves occasionally appeared to refill. A clear night in the fall was the best opportunity, but of course they’d been strictly relegated to the summers and brief holidays for years now. It had less to do with picking out the details of the certain stars after which his mother’s family had a penchant for naming their babies, and more to do with the long periods of companionable silence in between.

Those evenings were the closest Draco had gotten to feeling at peace since he received word of his father’s arrest. So he should have known, the way his luck ran, that they’d be interrupted by the gong-like chiming of the Floo.

“Who…?” Draco sat up. His mother did the same, more slowly, and stared down the French doors that led back into the house with a hard, watchful expression.

Draco had yet to get used to the sight of his Aunt, though she’d been dropping in frequently since the previous summer. Though her nearly black eyes had lost some of their sparkle since she’d fallen into the shadow of the Malfoys’ disfavor, they retained a manic gleam as she met Narcissa’s stare.

“Sister,” said Bellatrix. Draco couldn’t help comparing the woman before him to the gentler, younger version of her face occupied a portrait his mother had hung lovingly in her private study.

Draco froze, baffled by his mother’s icy silence. But fortunately, the Stupefy she had fallen under appeared to be broken a moment later. She reached out, without turning her head, and put her hand on Draco’s knee. Her sure touch put him slightly more at ease.

“Sister,” Narcissa said.

Draco tried to keep his chin up, and not shudder, when Bellatrix’s eyes traveled from his mother’s face to his. She was a beautiful woman; she had that in common with his mother. Though they didn’t distinctly resemble one another, he recognized a certain attractive haughtiness to her posture, a resilient distance in her manner. Bellatrix’s hair was as dark as Narcissa’s was fair, and her eyes were darker still, as brown as wet chestnuts. They were a sharp contrast to Narcissa’s—and Draco’s—clear grey.

“Nephew,” she murmured.

“If you are here, then the Dark Lord must not be far behind,” Narcissa continued evenly.

Draco’s heart began to pound. The Dark Lord? _Among them_? He looked down at his pajamas in flustered dread.

“If that’s true, should we dress?” he blurted.

Narcissa removed her hand from Draco’s leg. “You shall go to your room, Draco. I will receive the Dark Lord, of course. I’m sure he has no interest in children.”

Draco wasn’t sure if he was more outraged or relieved, but he had no opportunity to argue, as it turned out. While his mother spoke, his Aunt watched Draco, a faint smile on her dark red, very full lips, the gleam of teeth just visible where they parted. Her smile was growing now, her gaze drinking him in as though the longer she looked, the more she liked what she saw.

“In fact, _you_ may go to bed, sister. The Dark Lord desires to speak to Draco, and Draco alone.”

A buzzing noise and a sense of vertigo filled Draco’s head, and didn’t subside. His mother turned her head to look at him. She met his eyes, her face perfectly blank, and Draco stared back, trying to find whatever message she was trying to send him. But he felt that whatever she had meant to communicate, he missed. And then she was standing, kissing Bellatrix’s cheeks, and walking through the open French Doors back inside without ever speaking a word.

“Where…” Draco managed to say, thinking of what his father would do in these circumstances. For one thing, his father would be on his feet, Draco thought. So Draco stood, only staggering a little when his dizziness intensified.

Then his Aunt Bellatrix reached out and took his arm in a bruising grip. His gaze shot to hers, and this time the look on her face left him totally clear-headed. Here was the guidance Narcissa hadn’t offered; it was so obvious, she needn’t have said anything. But she said it anyway.

“Draco, you are your family’s final chance,” she said.

He nodded, and she released his arm, but held his eye.

“There is no greater glory to be had than at the right hand of the Dark Lord. Serve him well, and you too will know it.”

She spoke with such vehement reverence, Draco was instantly convinced. Hadn’t he been raised on whispered stories of the Dark Lord’s greatness? That if the Dark Lord rose again, the world would be righted and the old families’ power and influence restored?

“Thank you, Aunt,” he said. His voice sounded deep and sure; it surprised Draco, and visibly pleased Bellatrix. She was smiling that slow, blooming smile once more. The hand that had taken his arm so forcefully now floated up to gently brush his cheek. Her wrist smelled strongly of an herb with a name Draco couldn’t recall, but associated with poison.

“Now, come.”

Draco quietly dressed in the darkness of his bedchamber, Bellatrix prowling about with no concern for his modesty, picking up and putting down objects at random, occasionally laughing or muttering to herself. He had been teased, once, about the Black madness, and cried to his mother. She hadn’t visibly reacted, but he’d later heard that his playmate had an unexplained hex that was too stubborn to fully cure. Theodore Nott’s right ear was still missing a small notch from the lobe.

He wondered if madness should shame anyone, when it could make you as mesmerizing and fierce as he found his Aunt.

The Dark Lord was already there when Bellatrix led him into the ballroom. Draco had never seen him in person, but recalled his grandfather describing a beautiful, eloquent man. The figure of the Dark Lord whom Draco met was fully terrible, what a child’s nightmare might conjure, but that seemed fitting.

The marble floor was littered with candles, so the faint light cast strange and terrible shadows on the Dark Lord’s visage. His red eyes watched Draco, his long white fingers nearly blue from paleness, steepled over his lipless mouth.

“Here he is,” the Dark Lord said in his high, breathy voice. His fingers parted and his arms spread to either side. Bellatrix stepped away from Draco. He released her arm, which he’d held as though he was escorting her to a dance. When Bellatrix knelt, so did Draco. He lowered his head even though the sight of the Dark Lord had an undeniable allure. Draco wanted to keep looking at him, in all his haunting strangeness, but instead his gaze fell on the handful of candles that were arranged around him, some almost guttering in a pool of wax, some appearing freshly lit. What was this spell? The fire seemed real; the wax appeared to melt.

“And Bellatrix,” the Dark Lord said. Draco did not move as his Aunt got to her feet in a whisper of silk robes. Draco then chanced an upward glance, and found his Aunt directly before the Dark Lord, dropping back to a kneel and with her head still bowed, while he placed one of his unearthly hands on her head. His spidery fingers were so long, he appeared to cup her entire skull. Then his hand fell away, and Draco hastily looked down.

“This is the boy. Lucius’s boy.” The Dark Lord stepped between the candles, his robes pooled around him so that he seemed to glide, not walk. Their little flames quivered as he stirred the air in passing. “Abraxas’s grandson,” he added, sounding bemused. He was before Draco now. He smelled of fresh blood, like the ritual room on Samhain after Lucius bled a lamb to fill the carved bowls.

“I am Draco Malfoy, my Lord,” Draco murmured, mesmerized by the ragged hem of the Dark Lord’s robes.

“Look at me, Draco,” said the Dark Lord. Draco steeled himself, and looked up, obedient.

The Dark Lord had a long face, with a sloping forehead and a diminutive chin, further emphasized by how featureless he was, except for the eyes.

Draco met his gaze helplessly. He felt the needles of Legilimency slip deftly past the Draco’s defenses, which he’d always thought respectable, to tangle in his thoughts and memories.

The Dark Lord wasn’t looking for anything specific. He breezed through like someone who wanted to know Draco’s nature, not any particular detail of his personality or memory.

It was over in short order.

The Dark Lord frowned. He did not seem displeased, but neither did he seem impressed. A deep wound flared within Draco at that realization: that someone could inventory the root of all Draco was and emerge nonplussed.

“There is potential here, Bella, as we hoped,” the Dark Lord said, and that same part of Draco which had been injured by the Dark Lord’s reaction a few moments before now brightened at the possibility Draco could yet improve.

“Yes, my Lord,” his Aunt agreed in a fervent whisper. She was watching them, though she continued to kneel where the Dark Lord had left her.

“We shall see how he chooses to utilize our respective gifts,” said Lord Voldemort, and he held out his right hand for Draco’s arm.

Draco held it out immediately, shock gripping him. Would he be marked, now? With no greater ceremony, no demonstration of worthiness? Or perhaps he’d misread the Dark Lord altogether; perhaps he _had_ appreciated whatever he’d found when he examined Draco’s mind.

But the Dark Lord didn’t mark him. He only held Draco’s wrist, his fingers and palm as cool and smooth as a reptile, and studied it thoughtfully. He _did_ tap his wand against the underside of his own elbow, as though considering touching it to Draco’s arm, but then he let his arm fall back to his side just as he released Draco’s arm and turned away in a swirl of robes. As they lifted around his feet, Draco had a glimpse of his bare ankles and his long, slender toes.

“You have one month,” the Dark Lord said to Draco’s Aunt as he stepped past her. He did not pause, or touch her again, though Draco saw her strain slightly toward him as he passed by. As though magnetized; as though she couldn’t stop herself. Something hot and uncomfortable swelled inside Draco and threatened to make him sick, though he didn’t understand the impulse himself.

“Thank you, my lord,” said Bellatrix, her voice a low rasp. The Dark Lord did not turn or pause. If he heard her, he did not feel the need to acknowledge her. When he was out of the ballroom, the candles all extinguished at once. In the sudden, total darkness, Draco could see the thin fingers of smoke where just a moment before there had been flames.


	2. Chapter 2

**September**

Narcissa and Draco were among the first families to reach Platform 9 ¾. She rested her fingertips on his shoulders and Draco looked up at her patiently. She was still taller than he was, though no longer by more than an inch or two. 

She studied his face like she wanted to memorize it. He was tired of this; it was exhausting, to be looked at by someone like it could be the last time. The intensity of Narcissa’s energy had been grating more and more as the summer wore on.

“Have a good term, my love,” Narcissa said at last, leaning in to give his forehead a cool kiss. Her scent washed over him; it was whatever she put in her hair, and he could recall it from the earliest days of his childhood. It broke through the distance he’d felt growing between them over the past weeks, and made his eyes prickle with tears. 

“I will,” said Draco, pulling back hastily before he burst out crying in front of half the school. “I love you, mother,” he added in a rush, recalling that Occlumency could assist in regulating his emotions as well as his thoughts. When he called up his shields he felt his smile grow steadier, too.

Narcissa had a certain smile for Draco, and she was giving it to him now. She never lost her composure—even when it was only the two of them—but he’d always thought it was the closest she got to outright beaming. Loving her like he did in that moment was bad for his Occlumency, so he returned her smile for only a moment before turning and striding briskly toward the train.

It was an eventful ride. He held up the satisfying feeling of stomping on Potter’s face to clear his head and fall asleep that night. 

* * *

 

**October**

Draco finding the Room of Hidden Things was pure luck.

He had two objectives: to locate the Vanishing Cabinet, and to locate a place to repair and test it. Even as he began to lose heart in his ability to find the Cabinet itself, his search for the hidden room where Potter and his idiot friends had formed their “DA” intensified.

The year before he’d caught—or almost caught—enough of them coming and going that he was sure it was somewhere on the sixth floor. But after weeks of searching there at every opportunity he was losing heart.

Then it all came together so fortuitously Draco could almost believe in one of the gods his mother prayed to.

“Draco,” murmured Crabbe on the evening of October 4. “We going out?”

Draco was draped over his bed in the dormitory, and gazed up at Crabbe through his limp fringe. He’d been too distracted to bother with soap and water, only spells, but they just weren’t quite the same.

“What’s the point?” Draco rolled over sullenly. He’d dragged Crabbe and Goyle along with him every night, but they lacked the focus to be any real help. The alliance between their families meant they were the only people Draco had in school he could completely trust—that and having been introduced regularly since the three could all walk—but he was losing heart that there was anything on the sixth floor after all. Maybe—

Vince was patting Draco’s shoulder awkwardly. “Maybe you’ll be glad about it,” he said, with badly concealed excitement. “Maybe this is the night we really figure it all out.”

Draco hugged, rolling over again to bat Crabbe’s hand away. “What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t even know what we’re looking for!”

Crabbe’s broad face and beady eyes were solemn. “That room where Potter’s friends met last year?”

Draco was used to underestimating Crabbe, but this was embarrassing. “Oh,” he said weakly, then reflected on what Crabbe had said before and frowned. “Crabbe, what did you do?”

Crabbe’s face bloomed slowly into a dopey smile. “It’s a surprise.” He slid off the bed and started toward the door with an encouraging little jerk of his head.

At heart, Draco thought, following Crabbe with cautious optimism, Crabbe and Goyle were basically very sweet creatures. He shouldn’t be so hard on them. It was like kicking crups. Of course, when he heard  _ Daphne _ compare them to guard-crups he’d had to hex her, but this wasn’t the same thing. Draco meant it  _ fondly _ , and most importantly, would never say it out loud.

Just outside the common room entrance was a dead-end hallway of abandoned Potions laboratories. They were frequently used as meeting places, so Draco rolled his eyes when Crabbe turned down the corridor. Of course they’d choose this spot for a truly secret meeting, which was only slightly more private than the common room.

Even as they walked, Draco had to pretend not to notice a half-dozen Slytherins coming and going from various meetings, both business and pleasure, involving students from other Houses. He saw Theo Nott, trailed by Anthony Goldstein—perhaps they’d finally negotiated a trade for the antique scrying bowl Nott was determined to give his great-grandmother for her hundred and twentieth birthday. On the other end of the spectrum was Blaise’s third-year cousin Daniel, who had quite obviously been inexpertly snogging a willowy Ravenclaw witch six inches taller than he was. They both looked pensive and dazed, causing Draco to briefly, and fondly, recall his own experiments around the same age. Equally thrilling and mortifying, exciting and confusing.

Crabbe stepped around Draco to open the door, with evident, barely-concealed excitement as though he was revealing a room full of birthday gifts.

He may as well have been, as it turned out.

Goyle stood inside with his arms proudly crossed, and in the middle of the room the Weasley girl sat in a chair with the distinctly foggy expression of someone under an amateur’s  _ Imperio _ .

“ _ Goyle _ ,” Draco hissed, slamming the door behind him. He could  _ feel _ all the blood drain from his face. “You can’t be serious!”

Crabbe had stood beside Goyle to excitedly observe Draco’s reaction, so Draco was able to watch their expressions follow an almost identical transition from delighted to confused to crestfallen.

“But she knows about that room?” Goyle reminded Draco, a furrow appearing high in his brow.

“That isn’t…” Draco touched his temples, feeling suddenly dazed. “ _ Imperius _ is an  _ Unforgiveable _ , Goyle!”

Goyle frowned, lower lip protruding in a pout, and tucked his chin. Crabbe patted his shoulder consolingly and shot Draco a sullen glance. 

“Do you know the sentence for casting it?” He glared haplessly at Goyle, and when he wouldn’t meet his eye, settled for fixing the same look on Crabbe, whose returning stare was growing confused again.

”He wasn’t caught,” Crabbe pointed out, and Draco closed his eyes and breathed through his nose as he counted to ten.

When he opened his eyes, he slowly circled Weasley.

“I suppose,” Draco murmured, “that the crime has been committed. So we may as well capitalize on it.” He shot a sidelong look at Goyle, and saw him perk back up. 

Weasley had gotten pretty during the past year or so, in a sort of unkempt way. She had a complexion not unlike Draco’s—delicately fair—though in her case it was spoiled by freckles the same golden-red color of her hair. Her hands rested too neatly in her lap, like a mannequin awkwardly posed. One of her hands was flopped over the other and he could see where her palms were calluses from her broomstick.

Draco looked away, suddenly made uncomfortable by her eerie stare. There was a good reason, he thought darkly, that the Unforgiveables were so named.

“Ask her,” he hissed at Goyle, turning away.

* * *

 

Goyle and Crabbe were getting overly-confident. It was Draco’s fault. He’d gotten soft with them.

He considered Obliviating them for their own good, but settled in the end for an Unbreakable Vow, which probably should have made him feel guilty. His mother had always said the vows had no place in families or friendships, but Draco thought she would understand. And he knew his father would frown and remind him that Crabbe and Goyle were never meant to be his friends.

Then Draco followed the instructions Weasley had delivered in the dead voice of one compelled. He left Crabbe and Goyle watching the corridors. He thought of the Vanishing Cabinet and his need to make it whole, and paced back and forth, feeling humiliated even with no one watching. Then his embarrassment cleared at once when a door sprang into existence where there had been only empty stone.

* * *

 

Draco went every night. He brewed a Potion he’d once promised his father he’d never take in order to subsist on an hour’s sleep. The cabinet was complex, thrillingly so. Draco loved that kind of intricate magic. It reminded him of the Charm puzzles his mother had begun bringing home when he was only six or seven. He’d quickly advanced through the basic ones that worked with a toy wand, and his mother had quietly slipped him hers so he could progress obsessively through the levels.

The difference, of course, was that before no one’s life had ever depended on Draco solving a puzzle.

* * *

 

Draco finding Jay was less luck than accident. He must have been too sleep-deprived for clear thought; besides, his request for the Room has devolved from intense and specific thoughts the first few days to just the internal chant of:  _ need need need _ .

He was all the way through the door before he realized he was in the wrong place.

The sea of objects that had become such a familiar landscape was gone. The entire scale of the Room was changed. It was no larger than a classroom, and it had four large windows filled with the early-evening scenes of some beautiful landscape which was distinctly  _ not _ the land around Hogwarts

In the middle of the room, with a chair drawn up before it, was a full-length mirror.

Draco knew it wasn’t an ordinary mirror at once, because his reflection was there even before he stood in the mirror’s face. Draco’s reflected self peered close to the glass then, seeing Draco, jerked back and frowned.

“Who are you?” asked the reflection, in a voice as unlike Draco’s as his vocal cords could manage.

“I’m the one using these...facilities at the moment,” Draco said coolly, looking around.

“Good point. I reckon neither of us wants the other to know we’re lurking around secret rooms. Are you real, then?”

Draco looked up, frowning. He had the strange urge to say  _ no. “ _ Quite,” he said instead, with a grim smile that made the reflection look rueful in response.

“So am I,” said the other boy. “So, is this what the Room does when two people come in at the same time?”

“We didn’t,” Draco said. “We didn’t come at the same time. I would have noticed.”

“Yeah, me too,” said the other boy. “I suppose you’re just a talking mirror then.”

It wasn’t even a funny joke, but Draco laughed anyway.

He should have walked out, tried to reset the room. The other boy presumably could have done the same. But instead Draco circled the mirror, noticing that the reflection walked the opposite way, as if making the same study in a reversed orbit. 

They both came back around and gazed at one another. It was odd to see his own face wearing an expression Draco was sure had never graced his features: a little lopsided smile, his eyes clear and open and guileless.

“Perhaps you’re just a very cheeky mirror,” he hypothesized, leaning in. He needed to sleep more; it was the only explanation for why he was lingering here.

“ _ I’m  _ cheeky?” laughed Draco’s companion. When he sobered, he looked Draco over with more interest. “You sound very posh,” he said seriously.

“And you sound like a vagrant.”

The other boy laughed again. Draco knew he had never laughed so loudly, or with his head tipped back, one hand mussing his hair, the other one over his heart as though measuring its strength and pace.

After five minutes Draco was seated in the proffered chair and watching his reflection leaning back to balance on the rear legs of his counterpart chair, tilting it precariously near the tipping point. He was looking back at Draco pensively.

“It’s hard to find, this Room,” he said, the implied question obvious. Draco easily avoided the bait.

“Yet here we both are.”

“It’s weird, seeing and hearing you. Like talking to myself. Maybe I  _ am _ going a bit mental.” The boy frowned as though only vaguely concerned by the prospect.

Draco understood, and thought it had something to do with seeing his own face and thinking “me”; or at least “boy.” He supposed he could be speaking to a girl, though he didn’t think so. There was something about the posture, the clock of the head, that was both totally unlike Draco and totally male.

“Maybe we should think of something to call one another. An initial, or a nickname?”

The boy nodded, frowning as he thought it over. Then his face cleared. “You can call me Jay.”

An initial, then. Draco thought over his options in that category, but cringed at the thought of being called “Dee”; “Hache” was no better and “Em” too feminine. 

When he glanced up, Jay was grinning. “You think too hard. Just pick a letter.”

“Ash,” Draco said, settling on the French pronunciation of his middle initial, and hated it immediately. Jay’s grin was enormous

“That’s not a letter,” he said, “but I like it. It sounds posh.”

Draco gazed at Jay as rapt as the first time he’d seen an erumpet at the zoo in Paris, before a bunch of fussy animal rights wixes got it shut down. “You’re positively  _ plebeian _ ,” he told Jay, who smiled harder. Draco found the position he was in suddenly and unbearably fascinating. He, Draco, had not and never would associate with those who drifted in the myriad social circles below his; but he, Ash, had no such restraints. 

“Where are you from, Jay?”

Jay hesitated. Draco hastily amended, “Did your parents attend Hogwarts?”

Jay smiled a sort of helpless, weak smile that made Draco blink.

“Yeah, they did,” he said, with such transparent sadness that Draco knew at once they were dead.

For no apparent reason Draco’s thoughts bounded dizzily from Jay’s open laugh to Mother’s vacant stare when she’d happened across a book of poetry left out by Father in a little-used room. His Aunt’s deft magic mid-duel and the mind-clearing thrill of a successful parry. Then, absurdly, Weasley’s calluses, and the jagged edges of her bitten fingernails.

“Do you play Quidditch?” Draco heard himself ask.

Jay’s smile came back in perfect full force, and Draco felt a strange, protective impulse—that he should ensure Jay smile constantly. Just as Mother’s careful tending kept the sensitive roses in the greenhouse blooming even in deepest winter.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d love to hear what you think. ❤️


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

October

“If you had something really important to do,” Jay said slowly, “but it took a long time, how would you deal with it, day in and day out?” 

Draco looked at him cautiously, but Jay didn’t seem the least bit _knowing_ , just miserably confused. On Draco’s face that made his lips look unattractively pinched and his eyes very narrow. Draco avoided expressing sadness, except in brief bouts of crying in the privacy of a dark room. He found the look of it, on his own face, very disorienting. 

It was better to imagine the _real_ Jay, who increasingly appeared broad-shouldered and dark-haired in Draco’s imagination, and who had a strong chin that didn’t tremble with the effort of restraining his tears. 

“That’s the tricky part, isn’t it? Enduring something very stressful when it is particularly...prolonged.”

Jay’s unfocused gaze moved over to meet Draco’s, and he smiled. It was a softer and gentler smile than Draco’s face should have been capable of. “I’ve never heard anyone who speaks like you do,” Jay said. “You’re...sophisticated, I guess. A little like H—a little like a certain friend I have, but, erm, more so.”

Draco wasn’t exactly sure that he had just been complimented, but he chose to interpret it that way, and sat up a bit straighter. “Thank you. As far as your question… The most responsible way is to utilize the downtime by exploring every possible outcome.”

Jay looked doubtful. “Wouldn’t it be better to try not to dwell on it all the time?”

“Well,” Draco said thoughtfully, “I don’t mean _all the time_.” Draco thought about his own task almost constantly; he couldn’t help it. “But...well, you can’t let yourself be in denial that you have something important to do.”

Jay hunched his shoulders, but didn’t argue. 

“Let’s talk about something else,” Draco said, “if you want to be distracted so badly.” In fact, Draco had come to think of his time with Jay as an important respite from his own weighty thoughts, and he was loathe to sacrifice this visit to the maudlin. 

Jay looked unconvinced. “Like what?”

There were a few sure topics, if Jay was anything like the blokes in Slytherin. But instead of Quidditch or Gobstones, Draco found himself saying, “What about fucking?” 

He usually wasn’t so bold on this subject, though it was popular in his dormitory. Jay’s head snapped up and he looked satisfyingly shocked. “F—what?”

“That’s right,” Draco said, pleased to see that this turn in the conversation had served its purpose of clearing Jay’s face of all that self-pity. “Have you ever done it?”

Jay continued to seem perfectly scandalized. “No! I mean…” 

“Not even with a boy?”

Now Jay looked like he was choking on something. “No! I’m not...I mean…”

“Oh, that doesn’t interest you? I have heard some boys don’t fancy it. But it’s easier to find a boy to do it with. I mean, we sleep in _dormitories_.” Draco’s first experience had been with Theo, though the one he was weak for was, predictably, Blaise.

“You’ve…” Jay’s eyes were so wide there were wrinkles in the image of Draco’s forehead, which Draco disapproved of on principle. “You’ve done...it? With a boy?”

“Yes,” Draco said, wondering what the big deal was. He knew some of the other Houses were more prudish, but it couldn’t be _that_ different in Slytherin, surely? Sometimes his friends talked about sex so much Draco was downright bored by it. Even Herbology could start to sound interesting after a particularly long weekend. “And a girl, too,” Draco added more smugly, but only because finding a girl who was interested was considered a more significant achievement. In truth he hadn’t enjoyed it very much. There were so many unexpected lumps and soft places.

“I take it you haven’t?”

Jay had recovered from his shock, for the most part, and now he just looked pensive, if still flushed. “No,” he said after a moment. “I _have_ kissed a girl, but nothing...else.”

Draco shrugged. “Well, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, anyway, if you ask me.” Then he imagined Blaise’s long, strong arms and amended, “Well, it might depend on who you do it with.”

Jay laughed sharply. “I’d think so!” Then he shook his head, looking ruefully at Draco through his fringe. “You’re a piece of work, Ash.”

Draco grinned. “So is there someone you _want_ to do it with?”

“I guess,” Jay said, then shrugged, still smiling. “I don’t know.”

Draco stared. “You _guess_?”

“It’s not something I’ve thought about, much?”

Draco was torn between shock and skepticism. “ _Really_?” In his experience, boys thought about little else. Even Draco, who was more evolved than most of his peers, took his nightly wanks very seriously, with fantasies which involved a revolving, but specific, cast.

Jay frowned. “No. Is that weird?”

He looked too concerned for Draco to extend his misery. “It’s not,” he lied. “Not at all.”

He must have been very convincing, because Jay eased back into his ordinary smile. By default, he was cheerful. It was the strangest thing Draco had ever seen.

Jay was absently picking at the flawless fabric of Draco’s trousers. The sight made Draco wince. “Hey, that’s fine silk you’re desecrating,” he snapped.

Jay looked at Draco with a perplexed frown, then down at his thumb and forefinger poised at his knee, and smiled. “Well, actually they’re only Muggle jeans, and the patch is fraying right here. I bet _you_ couldn’t help picking at them, either.”

Draco made a low sound he hoped communicated his disgust at the thought of wearing ratty _Muggle_ denims. At the same time, his mind helpfully conjured an image of Jay as a boy in tight black jeans with skin showing here and there, and he had to sit up hastily, putting his back to the mirror in the process, to hide his blush.

* * *

His mother knew; Draco could tell. It was in the tone of her letters, and the way she asked questions over and over, not taking his silence for an answer.

_How are you bearing your father’s absence, my love?_

_Have you considered a weekend at home? It might do you good to get away from those crowded dormitories._

_Are you sleeping well?_

After reading the most recent version of the same and drafting an impatient reply, Draco went to Potions. He answered Crabbe and Goyle’s mindless banter with silence, until Pansy strode up beside him in the corridor and linked their arms.

Draco looked askance at her. They’d always been close, but now he was close to no one. Only Jay, who seemed both make-believe and the only vivid object in a blurry-grey universe.

“While I approve of finally having a decent DADA Professor,” Pansy said, in the low, bored voice she said most things, “I miss our Professor Snape in Potions.”

Draco nodded absently, resisting the urge to shake off her arm, and didn’t object when she sat beside him at his usual table, either. Theo, his most frequent partner, looked confusedly at the two of them a moment while Pansy pretended not to notice, then wandered off toward Daphne.

Slughorn appeared at the front of the room, his simpering face a physical pain to Draco. But he appreciated the slightly different perspective Slughorn had on his favorite subject, so he sat up a little straighter as the lecture portion of the class began.

“Can anyone tell me what witch wart’s primary uses are?”

Draco raised his hand immediately, but Slughorn overlooked him for that insufferable Mudblood, Granger.

“Garden fertilizer and Doxie repellant,” she answered correctly, to Draco’s chagrin.

“Very good, Ms. Granger,” Slughorn exclaimed, though it was an elementary question, honestly.

Draco glowered, still adjusting to a Professor in his favorite subject who was so eager to ingratiate himself to the other Houses, he forewent obvious opportunities to let his _own_ House shine. 

“Soon the Dark Lord will bury her kind,” Pansy leaned over to say, reassuringly. “That’ll shut her filthy mouth.”

It struck Draco strangely, though it was the sort of thing he and his friends said all the time, and had for years. But now the words carried a different, more significant weight. He stared at the back of Granger’s head—bushy hair, leaning over the table as she furiously took notes, committing every word out of Slughorn’s mouth to paper. He despised her.

Draco, too, took very thorough notes, and enjoyed delivering correct answers. He imagined the Dark Lord standing before the Mudblood with his deadly wand raised, and found he had no appetite for the image.

* * *

The Vanishing Cabinet was proving complex. The spellwork was so intricately imbued in the materials themselves, that Draco couldn’t mend it reliably despite several painstaking attempts. The work had the frustrating pattern of having seemed to work, only to collapse at the last minute. Each effort left Draco exhausted for days.

He had to consider an alternative, the simplest of which was the necklace.

It wasn’t difficult to lure Katie Bell into a meeting that he would ensure she’d never remember. He met her in the loo and smiled at her the way his father had taught him by example. It was most effective with witches but wizards weren’t immune. Draco had learned the latter through his own experimentation.

Bell gave an immediate, breathy laugh. It was almost too easy. 

When she pressed up close to him to peer down at the carefully-wrapped package, he felt ill from the strong scent of perfume applied with a too-heavy hand and the way she seemed to be eager to agree to whatever he might ask her to do. He didn’t like indignity.

After it all went awry he stumbled into the Room and leaned heavily on the back of the chair in front of the mirror. He didn’t look up, but he knew Jay was there, and just that was a strange comfort he couldn’t think about too carefully.

He lived all his hours beyond the Room in a rush; he recalled them only in summary. Here, whether it was the extreme highs and lows of his near-misses with the cabinet, or the mesmerizing mundanity of discussing everything and nothing with Jay, time slowed and his every sense sharpened.

“All right, Ash?” Jay asked softly.

Draco still didn’t look up, but he shook his hanging head.

“I wish I could help you with whatever it is.”

Jay was full of an essential sweetness that boggled Draco’s mind. He spoke ill of no one. He bore his own burdens with a lightness of spirit that Draco admired and envied. 

He wore Muggle jeans, which meant he was either a Mudblood himself or a lover of them, and by process of elimination Draco was almost convinced he was a Hufflepuff.

“You wouldn’t say that,” Draco said, “if you knew what it was.”

* * *

August

“The Dark Lord wishes to see you,” Draco’s Aunt murmured, half-breathless, her face full of joy.

Draco followed her downstairs.

 _You have one month_ the Dark Lord had said. And in that month, his Aunt Bellatrix had all but moved into the Manor, while his mother grew increasingly listless and Draco strived to learn more offensive magic than he had in five years of DADA. It was easier than he might have thought. His Aunt was perhaps an unconventional teacher, but she knew what motivated him.

For example, as she turned to open the doors into the drawing room, he noticed the tension in her forearm before he first glimpsed her wand-tip in her sleeve, and the Stinging Hex meant for his face bounced harmlessly off his wordless shield.

He returned her sharp, satisfied smile and preceded her into the room.

It was midday, but the high windows of the largest parlor in the Manor had been shrouded by a spell Draco didn’t know, leaving them blacker than they’d be on the cloudiest of nights. Though it was summer, a fire roared in the oversized fireplace, and near it stood the Dark Lord.

“Draco,” said the Dark Lord, almost warmly. Draco knelt, and heard the doors close behind him. His Aunt had not come in.

His neck prickled at the thought he was alone with the Dark Lord, his mouth dry with some combination of terror and anticipation. 

“My Lord,” Draco murmured, his voice sounding steadier than he’d thought it would.

“Stand, child,” said the Dark Lord, and Draco did as he was bid, his palms sticky at his sides, his pulse leaping. The Dark Lord hadn’t moved. He still stood several paces away by the fire, its light casting his face in shadow, while totally illuminating Draco’s in its shifting reflection.

“Your grandfather was once my favorite,” the Dark Lord murmured. He cocked his smooth, pale head. “When Lucius gave himself to me, I thought he would follow in his father’s tradition.” His tone shifted, growing wistful. “But Lucius was not Abraxas.”

Draco felt a spark of offense on his father’s behalf, but mostly he was caught up in the bright, mesmerizing light of the Dark Lord’s red stare.

“You, too, have Abraxas’ look. When he was just your age, I came to find him quite lovely, indeed.”

Draco had the absent thought that the Dark Lord was alluding to something just outside Draco’s comprehension, but didn’t let himself react.

“It is within your power, now, Draco, to eclipse all those who have served me before you. You could be higher in my esteem than they ever were. Do you have the strength to seize what I offer?” 

“Yes,” Draco said at once. His Aunt had taught him not to hesitate.

He was aware of the Dark Lord’s Legilimency, and also realized that it had begun the moment he came in the room, long before he noticed it.

The seal of the Dark Lord’s mouth pressed together and very nearly curved. He stretched out a hand; his curved fingernails were amber in the firelight. “Then give me your arm.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a million to aroundloafofbread for the beta read!

**December, 2006**

Draco had never enjoyed Ministry things. As a boy, he wasn’t permitted to go. And by the time he was a man, he had all that post-war stigma to deal with. Being the Heir of the dark lord’s right-hand; a Pureblood mysteriously allowed to keep all his family property (even their beach houses and peacocks); etc. But he went to all the functions anyway, because sometimes Harry went, too.

It was hard to be quite as oblivious regarding his own feelings at twenty-six as he had been at sixteen, but Draco tried anyway. Obliviousness was so _pleasant_. Therefore, when he turned from the bar and almost bumped into Harry, the expression he put on after a moment of surprise was sly.

“Look who’s here,” he said, managing not to wince at the sight of the _Sectumsempra_ scar on Harry’s stubbled cheek. “Granger must be campaigning.”

Harry didn’t rise to Draco’s bait. He never did. It made Draco try harder, frantically, no matter how many years went by.

“What is it this time? Secondary aid to the Vice-Minister of Organization and Color-Coding?” Draco was a bit drunk, which dimmed his ordinary cleverness, but he still found himself quite funny. He grinned into his glass. Or grimaced, really, but as he knew from studying his reflection, the two expressions looked almost the same from that particular angle.

Harry folded his arms and said nothing. Draco fixed his gaze on Harry’s hands. They were stronger than they’d been when he was a boy; squarer. He had an Auror’s calluses and a flyer’s corded forearms. Draco hadn’t been on a broom since the war. After surviving so much endangerment strictly by accident, he found it hard to put himself in harm’s way for the sake of recreation alone.

“It’s her own fault she has to spend countless hours decorating posters and raising a few Knuts. Before she insisted upon it—oh, we all know it was her, and you were nothing but a somber and recognizable mouthpiece—we didn’t have to elect anyone. No posters or Knuts required. You could have used your undue influence much more efficiently and simply told the Minister to appoint her.”

Harry sighed, which couldn’t have been a more passive-aggressive reaction had he tried. Draco lifted his head and closed his fist so tightly around the tumbler he held, he was surprised it didn’t break. Their eyes met, and with Draco’s guile startled away, the stare had an unwelcome intensity.

So he gathered himself back together within a moment, sniffed and looked away. “If you’re just going to stand there like a Dueler’s Dummy, I’ll find a more amusing audience.” He thought of walking away, but his feet didn’t move. Draco stared down at them accusingly, then realized that, at some point earlier in the evening, he’d scuffed his favorite pair of cognac dragonhide ankle-boots. Shame.

It was Harry who walked away, still without saying a word. Draco squinted at his receding shoulders. His build was still spare. He’d still be easy to overpower, with or without magic. Draco had a growth spurt shortly after his twentieth birthday, in which he’d gotten taller and broader than even his father. His Black genes, he supposed. Harry had felt slight, even back then, when Draco shoved him up against the wall. How he’d feel now, Draco didn’t dare imagine.

That kind of thing was the opposite of practicing obliviousness, after all.

* * *

Granger was smoking a Muggle cigarette when he found her out on the terrace, and she jumped at the sight of him, then relaxed when she saw who it was.

“Don’t tell anyone about the cigarette,” she murmured.

“I would never admit to having spoken to you, or having observed your personal habits,” Draco assured her. He looked at the package with interest. “Can I try one?”

“Still questing after ‘taboo Muggle experiences,’ then?” Hermione looked exasperated, but she got out a long, slender cigarette from the package and passed it over.

“Oh, it’s just parchment,” Draco said with surprise, the texture distinctive under his fingertips. “Do you light it with a spell?”

“Usually,” Hermione said. After Draco put the cigarette daintily between his lips, he leaned forward. She reached over and snapped her fingers a few inches from the unlit tip, and with a soft spark, it began to burn.

The smoke filled his mouth, too-fragrant and oily. He coughed. Hermione’s lip curled.

“You haven’t even inhaled, you baby. Now, when you do, think of letting it trickle in. And it’s like a tickle. If you fight it, it’ll only get worse.”

“Yes, well,” Draco grunted, and tried again. His eyes watered with the effort not to cough, but she was right. When he made himself relax, the smoke seemed to settle in. The act of surrender was in and of itself interesting, so he took another drag. They puffed together in silence another few minutes, but when Granger put hers out he did the same.

“Don’t tell anyone,” she reminded him.

He rolled his eyes, not caring to repeat his earlier answer, though it remained true. “Why not? You’re a M—a Muggleborn. You’re expected to have a few of their vices. And anyway, what harm can it do? A bit smelly, but a cleaning spell isn’t beyond you, is it?”

“They can kill you,” she said darkly.

“Not if you have lung-regrowing Potion, which we do,” Draco pointed out.

“You know, that’s one thing I’ll never get used to. ‘Since we can fix it with magic, we may as well break it.’”

Draco didn’t understand the criticism. He pulled twenty galleons from his pocket and handed them to her. She rolled her eyes, then pocketed them.

“I would have given you more, but I lost most of my galleons on a bet earlier this evening.”

“You could write a cheque.”

Draco jerked away from her. “And leave a paper trail? Hardly.”

She folded her arms and considered him. “Sometimes I forget.”

“Forget what?”

“That you’re not actually a good person. That you did what you did in spite of yourself.”

Draco couldn’t argue with that.

**December, 1996**

Avoiding Snape and crafting polite and evasive responses to his mother’s letters were distractions Draco couldn’t afford. He was close to a breakthrough on the cabinet; he knew it. Yet instead of dedicating himself to it more fully he found himself passing hours upon hours with Jay in the mirror.

“Do you think the mirror does anything else?” Jay asked tentatively, one evening when they were each sitting before it, their false faces close to one another. Draco had noticed that his breath couldn’t fog the glass, and that the pane was warm to the touch, alive with some sort of magic that he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“The wizards before us must have been much more accomplished,” Draco murmured in lieu of an answer. “They were capable of so much more. Take a Charmed object, for example; the new ones are Hippogriff shit, and the ancestral ones work faultlessly. Invisibility Cloaks, for example. We can’t even make them properly now, but the few that survived from hundreds of years ago are in perfect condition.”

Jay had gone oddly still, but Draco was too caught up in his soliloquy to pause now. “And how can we restore their work when we can’t reproduce it in full? What would it be like if we didn’t need to rely on their broken old spells, or compete to buy them at auction. What if we could simply recreate them on our own? It would change the world.”

“It would make everyone more equal,” Jay said in a tone of agreement.

That hadn’t been what Draco meant at all. People could never be equal; too many of them were idiots, or lacked the ability to form appropriate connections.

“Is this mirror old, then?”

Draco frowned, running his eyes over the edge of the gilded frame absently. “It looks it. I’ve certainly never heard of anything like it. Have you?”

“No, but I wouldn’t have.”

“What do you mean?”

Jay shrugged. “No one thinks to tell me anything. They assume I know all about the world, when I don’t. How could I?”

“Because you’re...Muggleborn,” Draco said flatly. The unfamiliar word felt awkward on his tongue, but Jay didn’t seem to notice his hesitation.

“My parents were a wizard and a witch, but they didn’t raise me,” he said carefully.

“That sounds terrible,” Draco said, meaning it, and unaccountably relieved to know Jay’s blood status. Not that it mattered, since they’d never meet outside this room.

Or would they? Perhaps they already had.

“If we had met in school, would you recognize me?” he wondered.

“I don’t know,” Jay replied, pulling his knee toward his chest and brushing the mirror with his knuckles, as though testing to be sure the barrier was still there. “I’d like to think so.” He blushed a little; he was always doing that. Whoever he was, Jay must not have Draco’s complexion, or he would have learned to control himself at an earlier age. Every bit of unease he gave away, with that rising color. “I’d like to think so. I really like you, Ash.”

Draco blinked. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that no one had ever expressed this particular sentiment to him before. He thumbed through his memories a second time to be sure, and no, definitely not. He tilted his head and looked at Jay, blush-stained cheeks to shy smile, with fascination.

“And I you,” he said awkwardly. “Though why is anyone’s guess. It must be the strain I’m under. And that cultivating a connection with you is useless, so I don’t have to concern myself with impressing you all the time.”

Jay laughed, but it was mirthless. “I know you’d hate me for saying that I feel sorry for you, but your life does sound hard.”

Draco snorted. His life was marvelous. “I feel very sorry for _you_ , if it makes a difference.”

Jay, of course, refused to be offended. He lifted his hand and pressed it wordlessly against the mirror.

After a moment, Draco raised his and placed it against the glass from his side. Their hands matched up exactly, of course.

“We could say,” Jay said softly, “who we are. Our names.”

What a silly thing, to be pleased. To feel pleasure uncurling at the thought of knowing Jay’s real name, of pairing that knowledge with the blossoming image of Jay that lived in Draco’s every fantasy, and had for a number of weeks. But there was a dark worry, too, that even this smallest injection of reality would kill the fragile thing they had grown between them. Draco couldn’t stand the risk.

So he said, “No, we couldn’t.”

* * *

That evening, Draco saw his mother’s owl, sighed impatiently, then called the bird down and reached for the letter on its leg.

He paused when he saw a smudge around his mother’s seal. Not a stray bit of wax, but a darker, rustier smear that could only be blood.

Draco opened the letter there, in the Owlery, with trembling fingers. There was no message from his mother, only a lock of her hair.

He went straight to the Room, with a frustrated groan when he saw he and Jay’s meeting place and not the Room of Hidden Things. He backed out and asked for the Room again. And again. On his fourth attempt, he cried out in frustration when it again revealed the chair and the mirror, and not his true object.

“Ash, are you there?” called the voice he’d come to think of as Jay’s, but which was nothing but his own. In a crazed thought, Draco wondered whether these conversations had ever been borne of anything but Draco’s overactive imagination.

Fueled by that thought, and a rising, precarious rage, Draco aimed his wand at the mirror and spat, “ _Confringo_!”

Draco had once cast the volatile spell at a chair, and as a result had been struck with several shards of wood, one of which came dangerously near his eye. He’d not, he thought distantly, learned his lesson from that experience. It seemed like the Curse-light arced through the Room in slow motion, giving Draco plenty of time to feel sick with dread when it finally made contact with the part of the mirror that showed Jay gasping in surprise.

There was no shattering noise, though; nor projectile shards of glass; nor anything, at all, except an instant, silent darkness. No, more than just darkness: a void that swallowed Draco in one gulp.

It felt all-consuming, like death. But before he could panic, the darkness began receding. The room emerged slowly around him, growing from beneath his feet and within the range of his arms and advancing toward the place where the mirror had been. Draco saw the chair, undisturbed, but beyond it the mirror was gone. There was an empty chair facing the first instead, and behind it, the figure of a boy. The shadows seemed coiled around him, but they were gradually tugged free.

Draco did not, at that point, suspect any particular person. In truth, he almost expected a puff of air and nothingness; the cruel revelation of a sick joke perpetrated on him by a barmy old castle.

The sight of anyone familiar would probably have shocked him. But to see Potter’s smudged glasses and stupid red mouth was the worst kind of mockery.

They stared at each other.

“No,” Potter said eventually. “ _No_.”

Hearing his voice did something to Draco. It made everything real. He had heard that voice a dozen ways, at least. Soft when he was reassuring Longbottom in class; uneven with stifled laughter when Weasley told one of his moronic jokes; flat and hard when answering one of Snape’s questions; sharp as a _Diffindo_ when exchanging barbs with Draco.

Draco knew Potter’s voice, and the sound of it in the otherwise silent room removed any lingering doubt that it was truly Potter— _Potter—_ to whom Draco had spent the past several months pouring out his heart.

“I mean, you can’t be…?” Potter went on. He looked as though he was tearing up.

Draco’s mind was racing, but there was an inevitable conclusion to be drawn from these circumstances. They were tragic in a way; Draco was almost sure his heart was broken, but that was irrelevant. More importantly, the turn of events was, in the greater scheme of things, remarkably fortuitous.

Draco lifted his wand as quick as he could—just then, while Potter was still reeling, dumbly blinking his stupid, very green eyes—and cast: “ _Incarcerous!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still plugging away at my first Drarry effort. I'd love to know your thoughts. <3


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